Othello 2

Olivier on Othello

“God knows,” said Laurence Olivier, “you have to be enormously big as Othello. It’s big stuff.” And so it is. Even bigger on the wide screen, through three Panavision lenses. Olivier, director of Britain’s National Theatre and one of its leading performers, was convinced of the logic of perpetuating, by means of the best cinema resources, not only a milestone in his career but an important historical event in the theatre—John Dexter’s production of “Othello,” with Frank Finlay as the evil Iago, Maggie Smith as the sweet, martyred Desdemona and Joyce Redman as Iago’s misused wife Emilia.
In an interview with “Life” magazine, the great actor revealed some of his thoughts on the role: “In Shakespeare, I always try to reassure the audience initially that they are not going to see some grotesque, outsize dimension of something which they can’t understand or sympathize with. If you have succeeded in the initial moments, either by a very strong stamp of characterization so they recognize you as a real guy, or by a quiet approach—then I think there’s no end to where you can lead them in size of acting a little later in the evening. “On the other hand, self-indulgence—getting carried away—is such a very great, common pitfall for an actor. You must always be like a jockey on a race horse—watching, watchful, watch it—listening all the time to one’s self . . . I don’t care how big the acting is, how loud you’re roaring, how stridently you’re screaming—it must never be absolutely quite at the top of your voice. If you hit the ceiling, then the audience can suddenly see the measure of you. Suddenly you look weak instead of strong and they think, ‘Oh my, he is straining himself, isn’t he?’”

Laurence Olivier has always believed in the cinema—since, perhaps, the days when he was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after “catches.” His own magnificent trilogy of Shakespeare films, Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III, bear witness to this.
      He says, “I’ve never felt old-fashioned. Like everybody, to myself, inside, I am 17 with red lips. ‘Old fashioned’ is a term of abuse, let’s face it. But a lot of drama—attitudes toward the theatre, techniques, methods—are not old fashioned so much as out of fashion.
      “You see, in an age such as this, in which nostalgia is about the least popular of one’s prerogatives, you’d better not be old-fashioned—because they don’t come and see the old darling to listen to him out of sentiment. “I’ve made great efforts to keep changing, come up with a surprise every so often. Whether I’m changing with the times or not, I wouldn’t quite know—being part of them.” Actor Anthony Quayle used to say about Othello: “it’s as formidable as Coriolanus—but he doesn’t have to spend three hours before every performance making himself totally black.”    Stuart Burge, director of the film, sees “Othello” as a story of “somebody’s destruction—but his own vanity. Its hero is a victim, its central tragedy is the break in trust between Othello and Iago . . . an intensely plausible situation.”
      Now “Othello” symbolizes something else. The potential power of the National Theatre. Although scarcely three year old, the company has triumphed in Moscow and West Berlin, as well as at home. A crowning succes de’esteme not only for Waterloo Road but for the nation.